I’ve been trying to install Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 but I keep getting a message saying that I don’t have SP1 installed even though I do have it installed, and it won’t allow me to install it. I tried to uninstall everything and reinstalled Visual Studio 2008 and updated it to Service Pack 1 but the same error keeps showing up whenever I executing the Silverlight 3 Tools installation. Here’s the error message I keep receiving:

Installation Requirements:

Build 9.0.30729.XX of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1 must be installed before installation can continue. See <A HREF=”http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=122094″>http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=122094</A> for download information.

I’ve done much research to resolve this problem but I couldn’t find any helpful information. However, I’ve been able to find some hints here and there and I’ve came up with the solution after playing around with it for awhile. But first I should clarify few things before I continue with the solution:

I’m using an early version of Windows 7 Professional since it was released 3 weeks ago by the time I’m writing this post.

The VS2008 build is: 9.0.21022.8 RTM which is the latest update I can get from Windows Update and it cannot detect any more updates for the VS2008.

I have Expression Studio 3 already installed.

Okay, so now to overcome the installation error of Silverlight 3 Tools follow up these few steps:

Download Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 from here. The download file name should be: Silverlight3_Tools.exe by default.

Download WinRar from here. Winrar will be used to extract Silverlight3_Tools.exe since it is an archived file. The reason I mentioned Winrar here is because I’m not sure if there is any other application that supports extracting EXE files. Feel free to use any other app that could do the job.

After installing Winrar or any equivalent application, right click on Silverlight3_Tools.exe and extract the archive file.

Finally, go to the location where you have extracted the file and execute the file VS_SilverlightTools_Setup.exe to install the Silverlight 3 Tools.